By Matt Rooney | August 20, 2008

It looks like Americans have embraced the call for "change," but unfortunately for Barack, it's not the kind he was accounting on.  New polling indicates that Barack Obama really is, as predicted, in serious trouble. Check out the latest Reuters/Zogby poll, showing Senator John McCain with a statistically significant 5 point lead over Senator Obama. In the battle of public perception, messiahs CANNOT afford to appear anything but inevitable.

Consider another angle to this story. John Zogby is, for those of you who aren't nerdy enough to know these things, a big-time Democrat. His polling usually over-samples Democrats or under-represents Republicans. Therefore, John McCain's lead might be even more impressive than the modest 5 point margin demonstrated in this poll.

Let's take a moment to decipher some more of John Zogby's "liberal-ese" and find out where this presidential race really stands:



"There is no doubt the campaign to discredit Obama is paying off for McCain right now."
- TRANSLATED: Voters are deciding that they really don't like Obama and his elitist attitude. Which is weird, because I like Obama and have an elitist attitude.

"This is a significant ebb for Obama."
-TRANSLATED: Huh? Obama should be up by 10 points. Uh-oh...

"That hairline difference between nuance and what appears to be flip-flopping is hurting him with liberal voters."
-TRANSLATED: I guess even liberals who voted for Clinton can't stomach a liar this big

"Conservatives were supposed to be the bigger problem for McCain. Obama still has work to do on his base. At this point McCain seems to be doing a better job with his."
-TRANSLATED: Hillary is off my Christmas card list.

"There were no wild swings, there isn't one group that is radically different than last month or even two months ago. It was just a steady decline for Obama across the board."
-TRANSLATED: ...except, of course, for publicly-subsidized liberal college professors who "experienced" the 1960s. Obama is still kicking some serious butt with that demographic.